A driveway is
a base course
with a nice hat.

Ponding water, ruts in the wheel tracks, units that rock underfoot, or edges that have spread outward are all base or restraint problems and cleaning will not touch them. Staining, faded colour and weedy joints are surface problems and often are just cleaning and re-sanding. We will tell you which you have.

Sometimes, and it is a genuinely good saving when it is true. But it is only honest to decide after the old surface is off and the base can be assessed and its depth measured. We will not promise it in advance.

For most of the build. We do not publish a number of days because it depends on the area, whether the base is being rebuilt, and the weather - all of which we can be specific about after a site visit. Where access genuinely cannot be lost, the driveway can be phased in halves.

Herringbone. Because no continuous joint runs in the direction of travel, it interlocks best against braking and turning. Running bond and ashlar are calmer to look at and quicker to lay, and are perfectly sound behind a properly restrained edge.

Not structurally - the edge restraint behind it does the structural work. But a contrasting soldier course gives the driveway a drawn edge and means every cut lands against a straight line instead of against grass, which is most of the difference between a driveway that looks designed and one that looks trimmed.

Match the roof and the trim before the front door. A driveway is seen from the street far more than from the house, and roof and trim are what it sits against in that view. Bear in mind that a large expanse of a very light colour shows tyre marks and a very dark one holds heat.

Yes - concrete panels or paver bands with planted joints are common here. They break up a wide expanse, reduce run-off and reduce the heat of a large paved area. They do need the planting maintained, and they are not ideal where a vehicle is turned hard in one spot.

Often, yes - if the cause is the fall running the wrong way, that is designed out. If the water is arriving from somewhere else on the site, the driveway alone will not fix it, and we would rather say so at the site visit than after.

Usually. It changes the drainage, may change the impervious area your jurisdiction counts, and can affect where the apron meets the street - so it is a design conversation rather than just more square footage.

It depends on the jurisdiction and the scope. A like-for-like replacement is treated differently from widening, re-grading or work in the right-of-way, and rules differ across the three counties and between municipalities. We confirm what your specific address requires before anything starts.

The apron is the section between your property line and the street. It usually sits in the public right-of-way, which means it belongs to the municipality or county rather than to you, and work there is often permitted separately.

Most commonly the material, colour and pattern, sometimes with a sample. Boards meet on their own schedule, and in our experience the association approval - not the building department - is the longest lead time on a driveway. It is worth starting early with the colour chosen.

We expect to - buried irrigation under South Florida driveways is normal. Lines are located before excavation and either protected or re-routed as part of the work, rather than discovered by breaking one.

The route in is agreed before anything arrives, and the areas alongside it are protected. Some marking of grass along the access route is realistic on a rebuild; we make it good.

The programme moves. We would rather lose a day than lay onto a base that has just been soaked, or compact joint sand that cannot dry. Rain during a South Florida summer is scheduled around, not fought.

Because the same square footage can differ several-fold depending on what is under the old surface, how much the levels have to change, and whether the apron is in scope. A published rate would be a guess. You get a real, itemised figure in writing after a site visit.

In rough order: rebuilding the base, correcting drainage, widening, complex patterns and borders, curves, right-of-way work, and keeping vehicle access throughout. The selector above lets you see which of those apply to you.

Not as soon as it looks finished. Poured concrete and polymeric joint sand each need their own curing time, and driving early is a real way to shorten the life of both. We give you the date at handover.

A little initial settlement as the field beds in is normal and is why the joints get topped up. What is not normal is settlement in the wheel tracks or at the edges - that is a base or restraint problem and it is ours to put right.

Rinse it down periodically, top up joint sand when the joints start to look low, and deal with oil drips promptly rather than letting them soak in. Weeds in joints are usually a sign the sand needs topping up.

Sealing is optional. It deepens the colour and makes stains easier to lift, and it needs redoing periodically. An unsealed paver driveway is not a neglected one - it is a choice, and we will tell you honestly what sealing will and will not do for the surface you have chosen.

That is the advantage of a paver driveway - a single unit can be lifted and swapped. It is worth keeping a small number of spares from the original pallets for exactly this reason, and we will leave you some.